British Marathon Swimmer Suffers Gruesome Eye Injury at Tokyo 2020 Olympics

British Swimmer Hector Pardoe suffered a gruesome eye injury during the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, forcing him to retire from a race. The incident happened on Thursday when Pardoe got elbowed in the face during the 10-kilometer marathon swimming race, which was his first Olympic event. He lost his goggles and suffered a cut, which was so bad he told the BBC he “was bleeding everywhere.”

“I thought I’d lost the eye,” Pardoe said during the interview as he was keeping a towel pressed against his right eye, per E! News. “My goggles came off completely. I always think whenever I was going to get an injury, I’d be able to finish the race, but my goggles fell off and I couldn’t even get them. I couldn’t see anything. I thought my eye had fallen out in the water. I was going up to the lifeguards, saying, ‘My eye, my eye! Is it OK?’ They weren’t giving me a very decisive opinion and I had to get out after that.”

Pardoe was treated by Olympic village medics. He then went to social media to share photos of his eye. “Elbow to the eye at 8K. Goggles snapped off and sunk,” he wrote in his Instagram story. “Still smiling though.” Another challenge Pardoe faced was the water itself. Due to the weather conditions in Tokyo, the water temperature reached as passed 80 degrees Fahrenheit.

“I started really fast from the front, really warm conditions I’m not used to. Never really done a race in such hot waters,” Pardoe told the BBC. “Started to panic when I was behind. Could see that any chance of [ranking] top five, top six was over. I was just trying to secure as much as I could and get the top 10 finish. I think I managed to do well to catch to keep up, I was feeling OK. I got into it a bit and then in the last lap, took an elbow to the face.”